Mike Scholtis
Digital Artist
Cologne, Germany
My name is Mike Scholtis. I grew up in Germany, near Cologne. Art was never the center of my life. I didn’t grow up in an art-oriented family, nor was I actively introduced to this world. I painted and drew every now and then as a child, but it wasn’t until I was 15+ that I developed a deeper interest in painting and art through the typical influence of Anime and Manga—Naruto, One Piece, the usual suspects :D. That was the period when I started creating my first drawings and sketches.
Video games quickly entered my life and had a major influence. One game in particular acted as the starting signal for me to develop a serious interest in painting: Guild Wars by ArenaNet. The art book “The Art of Guild Wars” is therefore significantly responsible for me developing an interest at all. The concept art by Kekai Kotaki impressed me so much that I couldn’t stop wanting to find out how to paint like that—especially on the PC, since it was all digital concept art. However, I was too young to buy the hardware or the tools. Therefore, I mostly just repainted motifs from the art books.
When I started my one-year EQJ (introductory qualification) as a media designer in an agency, I came into real contact with Adobe Photoshop for the first time and quickly realized everything you could do with it. I am still looking for my very first work today, where I “slapped” effects all over “Burg Eltz.” In the years that followed, I started building wallpapers for desktops. Unofficially, I created concept art for the video game DayZ, which even ended up in a magazine in Canada. My first artist name at the time was “Miltenart.” I got the name “Milten” from the video game Gothic.
The next level for me was my first graphics tablet, the UGEE G5. Since around 2012–2013, I started working intensively with Photoshop and its brush settings, experimenting with creating digital works. At that time, I also began looking at more and more art and paintings on the internet for inspiration, especially since social networks were really starting to grow during this period. At that time, I was most inspired by Agnes Cecile. In general, watercolor art was fascinating to me. I followed and studied her work for years, thinking about how to imitate it digitally. Around 2013–2014, I came up with a new name: “DEMORIE.” The name is composed of “de” from the Latin for “about/over” and “morie” from “memory.” Together, the word is meant to mean something like “About Memories.”
I have always been interested in incorporating feelings and emotions into my paintings. But it was always important to me to illustrate feelings and emotions in a non-obvious way.
DEMORIE is the name under which I have been publishing many portraits in different styles since 2013. I have painted my pictures using techniques ranging from watercolor to oil painting styles. Over the years, I have been influenced more and more by different artists. I have summarized a list of people here who have inspired me the most through their works in recent years:
- Agnes cecile
- Kekai Kotaki
- Yizheng Ke
- Toko Suzuki
- Serge Marshennikov
- Nick Alm
- Izumi Kogahara
- Alpay Efe
- Wangjie Li
- Will Yu
- Habiba Green
- Jeremy Lipking
- Tito Merello Vilar
- Kris Coolens
I was always interested in making my works not look like typical digital art, and I have tried to incorporate traditional techniques. Much of this is not easily created digitally because you need special brushes that you have to build yourself in Photoshop. The possibilities are endless, and I’m taking advantage of that as a digital artist. I find rough painting with a focus on essential details very appealing and try to continue to study this style of painting. I also like abstract elements that break up the realism. The goal is to create a balance of abstract and realism.
I still paint for fun and distraction. I consider myself a hobby painter who is happy when others feel inspired by my works.
– DEMORIE